


Let's Meet at a Witch Gathering SasoSaku

by Vesperchan



Series: Tumblr Shorts [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Fantasy world au, Gen, Isekai, Let's Meet at the Witch's Gathering, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Witch AU, open ended onshot, up to you what happens next
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vesperchan/pseuds/Vesperchan
Summary: She wasn't anything so great and Sasori didn't need a new witch guardian because his parents were going to come back and protect him.





	Let's Meet at a Witch Gathering SasoSaku

Sasori watched in muted fascination as the puppets pulled on the chains connected to the woman’s wrists. It was so unusual to see his grandmother’s puppets employed in such a way. Chiyo was an older woman and not nearly as fit as she once was, but it looks like she went out hunting.

“It’s the last time, hopefully.”

Sasori turned to see the wrinkles around his grandmother’s mouth tug in a familiar grin. Her eyes were hidden in shadow, but he could tell where they landed. She was watching the woman the puppets brought in just like he was.

“Last time what?” he asked, playing dumb.

“Don’t act cute, it’s unnecessary,” Chiyo snapped. “You know what I’m talking about. This was the last time I’ll have to use my puppets.”

Sasori nodded slowly, and then stilled. “Why?”

Chiyo did her best to bend only enough so she was level with his eyes. She touched his shoulder and pointed the her puppets. “That woman there, the one in chains, she’ll take my place and protect this home.”

In his heart something rubbed the wrong way. His parents were supposed to protect his house. Mom and dad were supposed to come home to keep them all safe. Chiyo could do it when they were busy, but they didn’t need an _outsider_. They told him his parents weren’t coming back but he wasn’t sure what they meant by that. Mom and dad would always come back for him. Anyone else was unnecessary.

“I don’t like her.”

Chiyo cackled. “She probably doesn’t like you much either, brat. You think those chains are for decoration. I fought tooth and nail to get her under like that. I needed help in the end, but that’s not important. Her magic is blocked and she’s as good as can be like that.”

The puppets stopped outside the door that lead down to the basement cellars. Some were stocked with food, others were barred in with metal to keep livestock penned. If she was in chains that was probably where they would take her.

The puppets had to pause at the door while one of them undid the locks and lifted the latches. In that pause, she flexed her wrists and turned sharply, glaring over her shoulder up to the higher levels where Chiyo watched on with Sasori. Her eyes flared with magic that made them bright enough to see the color of, even from so far away. Her eyes were emerald fires that hated him to his core, he could tell.

The puppet tugged on her chains and she turned, snarling. Sasori watched as she dug her heels into the ground and pulled back with all her might, stripped of all her magic and as feeble as any other human. She was valiant in her efforts, thrashing and kicking when another puppet picked her up off her feet. She bit at what she could and tried her damnedest to get away. They tugged her down and he watched as she caught the edge of the doorway, nails digging into the doorframe. She held fast and it made Chiyo annoyed enough to flick her wrist and give the puppets a new command. It kicked her in the face and Sasori watched as she tumbled down the stairs to the cellar.

“I don’t think she wants to be here.”

Chiyo laughed at his simple words, reaching out to ruffle his short red hair. “You think so? What gave it away, the kicking or the screaming?”

“Why did you take her? She’s not going to help us.”

“She will if she wants those shackles off. Plus, she was too useful to ignore. Her talents were going to waste. I told you of the hidden villages, didn’t I? She was from one of the fallen ones.”

Sasori paused, recalling the stories his mother would tell him before bed, only to be interrupted by Chiyo inserting all the dramatic and tragic details. The hidden villages were where wizards, witches, sorcerers and magic kin of all sorts trained and worked until the purge. Government officials didn’t trust organized armies that they couldn’t understand, so all the witches were burned.

The last hidden village fell almost a hundred years ago, (eighty nine years actually,) but Leaf was one of the first to go under.

“How can that be? She doesn’t look that old!” he exclaimed. She had the smooth face of a woman just leaving her teenage years behind.

“I told you, she’s a witch. How old so you think I am, brat?”

Sasori’s excitement paused to answer in the most dull monotone possible. “Older than dirt.”

Chiyo cried out and slapped the side of Sasori’s head. “Petty brat. See if I ever do anything nice for you after this. Just for that I’m not introducing you to her for another eight days.”

“Why would I want to be introduced to someone like her? She hates us and I don’t care about someone like that.”

“Don’t lie, you’re interested in learning about her immortality, aren’t you?”

“Th-that’s it though!”

He flushed, knowing that he had been found out. His grandmother already knew about his fascination with things that couldn’t decay, like her puppets. Chiyo herself was over two hundred and forty years old, but the coven she had been born into weren’t known for their unending youth or long lifespans. Those from the land of whirlpools and leaves were more long lived than others.

“Keep to your studies and learn your manners. She’s not going anywhere anytime soon. A week or two in the dark and she’ll be in a better mood to discuss terms for cooperation.”

“Can’t you just make her do your stuff for you?”

Chiyo stepped away from the railing and Sasori moved as well to follow her back inside, out of the noon day sun. “I could compel her to move like my puppets, but not even I with all my powers can bend the will of another. That’s something saved for lesser witches, but we need not rely on their magic of the mind. No, if she has the right incentive she will put even my abilities to shame.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get her to do what you say.”

Chiyo laughed. “We’ll see.”

Sasori hated a lot of things, but few things he despised as well as waiting. He didn’t wait Chiyo’s eight days, but snuck down on his own after the first four, knowing it would be the easiest day to slip away on account of all his absent tutors. Few and fewer were trekking out to their estate in light of the marauders from the black waste. 

The puppets were gone, but the bolts on the doors were still there. He undid then enough to get through, and left each door partially ajar behind him. The first few rooms were filled with foods and salted meats to last them through the winter. Chiyo’s dried herbs hung from the ceiling, far out of reach.

Deeper in, and to the right curve in the cellar’s floorpan, metal bars began to show up. Sasori passed three different pens for livestock before he reached the forth one. Unlike the other three, this one wasn’t empty. 

Chiyo had called her Sakura, and he guessed that had something to do with her hair, and the story about her coming from the village hidden in the leaves. She looked like a cherry blossom tree out of season, limp across the thin straw, one arm draped over her eyes while the other hung in the air, held taunt by the shackle that connected her to the wall.

She didn’t stir when Sasori approached, and he wondered if that was because she didn’t hear him. He hadn’t been trying to be extra sneaky for her, only when he snuck in the first time.

He waited maybe a whole minute more, but when she didn’t move he grew annoyed. There was a stray stick on the floor across from the cells that he picked up to hit the bars with.

“Hey you, wake up!” he called. “She said you name was Sakura, so get up.”

Her arm slid up off her eyes, but the look she spared him was just as bored. “Why?” she rasped, voice dry and cracking.

“Because…because I’m here! Don’t you know why you were brought here? You’re going to protect the manor and the little lord, that’s me!”

Sakura eyed him up from toes to crown and then let her arm drop back over her eyes. “Unlikely. There’s no way someone as smart as Chiyo the Sand Witch would make so bad a mistake. Go away and leave me to sleep, boy.”

Sasori colored at her tone and clear dismissal. He didn’t care what she thought of him, but he was upset she had such poor taste. He was well born and an important person to the desert valley. His family owed the aquifers that made survival possible in the barren wasteland. People he didn’t even know respected him more than she did.

“My name is Sasori, you should remember it.”

“Not necessary. I’m not planning on staying here that long.” She shook the arm still chained to the wall. “She knows that too. I might have been outsmarted once, but her magic is still weaker than mine. Eventually I’ll be free. She can worry about what I’ll do to her then.”

“You sound like a wash-up.”

She was still for a while before opening her eyes again. They weren’t bright with magic like they had been the day she was dragged in, but Sasori could tell they were still free, even in the darkness.

“What’s a wash-up?”

“A has-been. Someone who’s no good anymore. You sound like a lazy, bloated old windbag that blows on an on about how great they are.” He waved his hand dismissively at her. “My grandmother is far stronger than you know.”

“Sure, doesn’t change the fact her magic is non combative.” Sakura settled back down into the hay, resting her arm over her eyes. “I give it another four days. No use remembering your name.”

“It’s _Sasori_.”

“See, I’ve already forgotten it.”

“You’re terrible, I can’t believe she thought you would be worth anything. I could probably protect this estate better than you.”

She snorted into her arm. “That’s very likely, seeing as how I wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

“Once my parents come back we’re going to throw you out.”

“Great, thanks for that. Wake me up when that happens.”

Sasori wouldn’t admit it, but he felt a small part of his heart where his dreams were kept pinch and blacken. He had dreamed so often of the tales of heroes from fallen covens like the one hidden in the leaves. The stories of the hidden villages had enthralled him from cradle to knee. The woman in the hay wasn’t supposed to be so lackluster. Chiyo must of made a mistake. There’s no way the woman was from such an amazing place.

“Were all the other witches from the Hidden Leaf so pathetic? It would explain so much if this is all they amounted to.”

Sakura didn’t stir but Sasori felt like lashing out even more.

“It was a stupid place filled with stupid people, jut like you! I’m glad it’s not-”

The chain links were still clattering to the floor, some in broken bits, as her hand reached through the bars and yanked him up. Sasori smelled her flesh burning as Chiyo’s seals held fast. Her flesh was melting off in globs, but her strength didn’t waver.

He was eye level with her now as she held him up off his feet. “You don’t know anything, brat.”

Her hand was around his throat and with all the strength she had to break chains his scrawny neck was barely a challenge. He thought she would. She had the eyes for it, blazing with green fire and crackling with gold lighting.

But she dropped him and he landed on his feet, falling backwards when his legs gave out under him. His whole body was shaking in a way he couldn’t control.

Sakura pulled her hand back through the bar, bleeding and burned as it was from finger to wrist. She eyed it critically, not even flinching at the blood and gore of it. Her unmarked hand came up, glowing with green light and she used that light the teach her body _the way of mending_.

Sasori watched transfixed as she reversed the damage, pulling blood veins back into place, and sewing stitches of skin back together until they covered all the bones in her hand.

A minute later her hand was as good as new and she looked none the worse for it. Sasori knew other wizards could get winded from the simplest cantrips, but she wasn’t a wizard and she didn’t even seem phased. 

He tried to make words, but they felt limp on his lips, ruined by the fear his body still suffered. “Y-y-ou-you…”

“Go, boy. I’m tired of hearing you antagonize me.”

She turned away from him and stood in the place above the hay, watching the far wall with a dead look in her eye. It was like she had turned herself off to the rest of the world and retreated into some far place in the far reaches of her mind. Her hands were fine and the shackles were a mess on the stone floor, but she still looked dead-faced.

“Sasori!” It was the only thing he could manage to say. “My-my name is-is Sasori!”

Then he ran out of the cellar as fast as he could.

* * *

Before the eight day when she was supposed to make her escape and when he was supposed to be allowed to see her for the first time, the south wall crumbled under the heavy body of a Goliath scorpion. It was the easiest way for the desert marauders to get in.

Chiyo had the servants run to the far places while her puppets surged to meet the attack, but with her ten skilled puppets, she could only manage the humans who trickled through. The giant scorpion was still roaming free.

Where were his parents? The could take care of the marauders and the giant scorpion together!

He climbed up high, looking down at the chaos below. Chiyo’s gardens were on the lowest floors, but her lab where experiments and poisons were concocted were all done in the tower where he hid himself.

The scorpion was right below him and it was turning, reaching for the base of the tower’s foundations. Twisting upwards it began to climb and Sasori scrambled for the vials and containers, looking for something that might help. He remembered which ones burned and ran back to the window’s ledge.

It was halfway up when he dropped the syrup that caught fire when his match landed in it. The scorpion slipped, but as the fire spread over its body it continued to climb, making up the ground it lost in stride.

“They’re impervious to fire, even mine, kid.”

Sasori jumped at the sound just over his shoulder. She stood there, leaning against the window with a bored look on her face. She was still as much a mess as he remembered her, and she smelled like desert and sweat.

He wanted to ask how she got out, but didn’t bother. If she could break her own shackles after four days she could probably break those bars after another four.

She turned and looked down at him instead of the monster creature. “Where are your parents? You said they would be here to protect you.”

Her tone wasn’t mocking, but bored. It made his face pinch as he thought the answer, but refused to speak it. He didn’t tell her about the bodies Chiyo brought back, or the two new puppets she made out of them. He didn’t tell her about the limits of life and death he hated.

He just cried.

Parts of the tower crumbled and shook but she knelt down next to him, as calm as before, and watched him sob. A shadow stretched over the window as the scorpion’s body swelled beyond the frame’s limits, passing them over.

He trembled, scampering away as the body moved back enough to make room for the tip of a giant pincer. Sakura didn’t move as the pincer was too wide to reach her. The frame strained and wood shattered in parts, but the stone held, bound with magic as well as mortar.

“You can’t deal with these guys using fire. It’s pretty, but not nearly as effective,” Sakura said, finally standing. She sighed and turned her face to the window where the scorpion struggled. “Just watch kid, I’ll show you what my village was known for.”

He didn’t have time to ask what as green magic bloomed from a mark on her forehead and her whole body shifted as black lines leaked from the seal on her forehead down her arms and legs. The looked like thick black lines, but Sasori could see the layers of incantations upon layers of incantations overlapping from years of spell work. Her magic changed and shifted her body into something else.

Sasori stood to back away as Sakura approached the pincer and grabbed the tip. With a shove she sent it flying out the window, and he could see how the rest of the scorpion body almost followed its momentum as it slid down the tower. Sakura jogged to the edge and then fell, folding one foot behind the other and folding over. She tumbled right into the body with her fist raise and the thunder from her impact sent shockwaves for what felt like miles.

Sasori was knocked off his feet as the scorpion was shattered into pieces she fell through. When she landed the marks on her body were thicker and growing. Even from so far away he could see how magic leaked through her eyes like the stray tongues of fire. 

Parts of her body burned with crackling gold magic as she raised a hand and burned alive a pair of marauders who weren’t wise enough to flee when they saw her handwork with the scorpion.

Transfixed, he watched from his tower as she channeled two veins of separate magic with perfect balance, defying limits he had always believed in. Her hair was a rose colored flame around her face as more and more of the enemies fell under her feet.

His throat felt dry.

* * *

Sakura used her spells to chase down the last of the would be invaders, sparing them little mercy when they begged for their life.

Eventually, she found Chiyo in one of the many useless parlor rooms inside the main building. She was nursing a bruise on her forehead and sipping something that smelled like chamomile but likely wasn’t anything nearly so innocent.

“You’re getting old,” Sakura huffed, reaching out to heal the bruise.

“I’m still your elder, little girl. Show some respect.”

Sakura pulled her hand back and then reached for a footstool to perch on, ignoring the other enormous armchair. “What happened to the boy’s parents? The lord and lady of this house are dead, aren’t they?”

“Both, yes. You don’t deserve the details.”

Sakura’s lip curled but she didn’t bite back in the sarcastic tone she had perfected from years alone. All her friends and family were long gone, and she was left behind with their memories and the secret to a cursed kind of immortality. If she had known her regenerative spells would take over like the weeds they were she might have elected to die out with the rest of her peers. It would be easier than living alone for over half a century while the last child died in his bed, wrinkled and gray. She wasn’t used to being kind like she once was. It wasn’t in her nature to be soft anymore.

“I’m not fond of children.”

“Liar,” Chiyo barked. “They adore you.”

“Not the same thing, and also not true. I left yours unsupervised in a tower, what does that say about me, huh? I can hang around for a handful of years until you figure something else out, but I’m not committing my life to anything. Your grandson might turn out to be someone formidable one day. Until then…I guess I could stay.”

“It’s really too much trouble to travel from this point,” Chiyo admitted. “Nothing but desert for daaaaaaays. You’d be bored out of your mind before you reached the nearest town.”

Sakura groaned at the woman’s sing song voice. “No wonder you’re constantly invaded. What else is there to do?”

“It’s necessary for my experiments. I need a radius of safety.” 

Sakura waved her hand and gold magic sparkled, enchanting a nearby teapot to pour for herself a cup of black tea. A stick of cinnamon stirred itself into the mix along with the spices and milk before cup and saucer floated to where she sat.

“I’ll need my own space, and not just a single room, I mean space for my own experiments. Give me a corner of your gardens to use on my own,” Sakura said.

“A corner, no more.”

“And access to your own experiments.”

“Never!”

Sakura chuckled, taking a sip. She wrinkled her nose at the dull temperature before gold magic made the tea steam once more. “That sounds like a ‘_yes, as long as I don’t catch you_’ to me. I’ll take it.”

Chiyo cackled. “Insufferable girl.”

“At least I didn’t scheme for all your protective wards to fall apart at the _exact_ time a giant scorpion and seventeen wash up bandits from the desert found your fortress in the middle of nowhere.” Sakura shot the older woman a look of bored disbelief over her tea. “Classy, Chiyo, very classy of you.”

“I don’t take half measures to get what I want.”

“No, you don’t, do you.” Sakura looked over to the doorway where a miniature shadow still clung to the doorframe. “It’ll be interesting to see how much of that gets passed down.” 


End file.
